6 Common Publishing and Marketing Mistakes

In today's guest post, Mark Coker, founder of ebook publisher Smashwords, shares some of the most common mistakes that he sees authors make in publishing and marketing.

The most common ebook publishing mistakes that I see are:

1.  Sloppy editing:  Although Smashwords makes it fast, easy and free to publish an ebook, we don’t make it easy to write a great book.  Many indie authors rush their books to market before the book has been properly edited or proofread.  I can’t underscore the importance of good editing.  Every book benefits from the unforgiving eye of an independent editor and proofreader. 

2.  Sloppy book covers:  Some authors, after investing a lifetime in writing their book, invest under five minutes to create a quality book cover. If a picture tells a thousand words, an ugly book cover image tells the book buyer, “don’t click here.” Good ebook cover design services can be had for under $40, so why sell yourself short? 

3.  Failure to understand that ebooks are formatted differently:  Some authors, especially those with years of professional publishing experience, have a difficultly making the transition from print design to ebook design. With ebooks, simpler formatting and layout actually improves the value of your book to the reader. If authors obsess over making their ebook look like an exact facsimile of their print book, they invariably cause themselves great frustration, and ultimately release their book in fewer formats or worse, they damage the reading experience.

Common book marketing mistakes include:

1.  Late to market:  If an author waits until their book is published to start their marketing, they’re too late. Authors should build their marketing platforms early, before they’ve even put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. Marketing should be a career-long endeavor.

2.  Failure to make marketing a daily priority:  Every author needs to realize they are competing against millions of other authors for the limited eyeshare of readers. Authors should spend a minimum of one hour a day to make themselves and their work more visible to readers.  Online social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and message board forums not only make this easy, but rewarding as well. At the end of every day, authors should ask themselves, “what did I do today to build my platform, and what will I do tomorrow?”

3.  Spamming social network followers:  Bookselling has always been about word of mouth, and nothing catalyzes an author’s marketing campaigns like a good social networking presence. If you can cultivate hundreds or thousands of followers on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter, and you can motivate them to care passionately about your success, then you have a powerful marketing tool at your disposal. But don’t spam your followers with a constant barrage of “buy my book” messages because they will tune you out.  Instead, enter into a two-way relationship with them.  Contribute value to your online communities. Participate. Pay it forward. The value of your network is not how many books they will buy, but how, as your advocates, they will spark the word of mouth necessary for true book success.

I encourage all authors to download Mark's free Smashwords Book Marketing Guide for some terrific book promotion tips. For information about publishing ebooks through Smashwords, see  How to Publish at Smashwords. You can follow @MarkCoker on Twitter. And don't miss my interview with Mark: How to Make Your Books Available in Multiple Ebook Formats.

Comments

[Susan Cross]

Good article, Mark. People don't realize that e-readers allow the reader to change font size, etc. so formatting changes with their preference.

The marketing tips are valuable. It's important to find your market and form a relationship with them. This can be done not just on the social networks but by searching the web for organizations that share a common interest with the author. For every contact you make you increase the possibility of book sales exponentially.

[Fiona Ingram]

Great tips, Mark. Your points 1 and 2 are most pertinent. I review books and find that e-authors often rush into e-print leaving glaring errors or else many times an amateurish cover spoils one's perceptions of the entire book.

[Anne Cain]

As a designer and illustrator with several years experience in the field of creating cover art, I just wanted to add a little something to point #2. A book's cover is definitely the face of the story and it has the potential to leave a huge impression--good or bad--with readers. But that $40 figure is only about half to one-third the price of quality design/illustration services for ebook covers, and that's quoting on the low side. Forty bucks barely covers the cost of stock photos and--maybe--a font for a project, and it most certainly doesn't even begin to compensate for the time and creative effort that goes into the process. The cost of art and design services is something an author will have to take into consideration when it comes to marketing their book, but art is no less involved and creatively challenging a project than writing. It's unfortunate if artists/designers are underselling themselves, and it's equally unfortunate if an author is not doing the best they can within their budget to give their novel the strongest cover art possible.

[Larry Gray]

Thanks for the tips. As a writer wannabe I appreciate all the ideas I can get.

[Toni Sciarra Poynter]

Thanks for your candid and succinct assessment of the issues on both sides of the table (publisher and author). As an editorial consultant, I sometimes feel ambivalent about discussing the benefits to authors of working with a qualified outside editor, so I'm glad you have! An editor who functions as a stand-in for the reader and helps the author spot areas of confusion or awkwardness that are likely to throw readers off and inhibit the irreplaceable velocity of word of mouth is a terrific ally for authors to have. Thanks again for your article!

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Thanks everyone for your comments! It's so important to create a quality product and to make time to promote it.

[dirtywhitecandy]

Excellent tips. As a publishing professional used to print media, it took me a while to work out that ebooks are different. I'd designed my book, Nail Your Novel, to look like an exciting read in bite-size pieces. It does - in print. When I came to do the ebook version, I didn't have the range of fonts and sizes - which caused major headaches!
I also second your point about editing and cover artwork. All of these need to be professional. Publishing houses split these roles into separate jobs because they are specialisations of their own. It's very hard for a writer, no matter how good, to be a jack of all trades.
I'm tweeting this!

[Sue Ann Bowling]

Yes! I've avoided straight self-publishing for just the reasons given, but even with assisted self-publishing (print on demand) editing before sending the manuscript in was critical. An author has an extremely hard time seeing ambiguities--the author knows who's speaking or to whom a pronoun refers. A reader frequently won't. A good editor catches ambiguities, points out when more or less is needed, and more.

[Supra TK Society]

With all good wishes for a brilliant and happy Christmas season. Hope things are going all right with you.